Jason Della Rocca, the former IGDA boss and founder of Perimeter Partners, says that the video game industry needs to start thinking globally and stop worrying about local and regional advantages such as tax breaks. The elephant in the room was Canada's tax breaks and how various territories in the Great White North are pealing studios away from the United Kingdom.

Speaking to GameIndustry.biz at the Nordic Game Festival earlier this month, Della Rocca talked at length about tax-breaks and why they are such a small part of a larger eco-system. Della Rocca thinks that chasing tax breaks alone is a waste of energy.

"Well you know, look at California," said Della Rocca when asked about Canada's tax breaks. "They have forty percent of the US industry's workforce. There are no incentives there. Do we say that that pooling is cannibalizing the rest of the country? I mean, it absolutely is - people are coming from all over the world to work at the awesome companies there.

So Canada can also be 'blamed' for maybe recreating a bit of that through the incentives and the job creation demand, but my sense is that it's more rhetoric. 'Look at Canada and all they've done!' Can we actually look at the people and see how many people actually left and went to Canada? I don't get the sense that it's planes full of UK developers.

So are they stealing those people? I don't know. Maybe, but I don't really know. It'd be interesting to look at those numbers and see what sort of effect it has. I'm much more thinking in a global perspective. Although I may help specific governments grow their industry in their country, I want to see the industry be healthy on a global basis. So personally I don't care if you go from one country to another or not."

Della Rocca believes that tax breaks are not as important as an environment that establishes important necessities such as education, infrastructure and the talent that an industry requires.

"The tax-break issue... It's not about the tax-breaks alone. When I talk about the industry I talk about an eco-system kind of metaphor. It's very dynamic, it's a complex system, there's lots going on, it's not clear that introducing a tax-break is going to be the thing that all of a sudden makes your ecosystem thrive.

In fact there are regions where there's nothing - it's a desert. So you say, we have this desert and we'd really like there to be a game industry there because we think it's sexy and good jobs etc. So they look at Canada and say, well, they're doing so well because they have these tax-breaks, let's put a tax-break in our desert."

Della Rocca goes on to say that the UK games industry has a better chance of educating and engaging its membership than it does getting tax relief passed by politicians. He also says that you can't put tax relief in a region that has no talent or structure and expect good results. In his view, the UK should have spent its energy on business acumen and educating developers and publishers on new digital distribution methods and platforms.

In closing he says that trade groups, such as TIGA, don't always focus on what they should:

"Recently, I think in the last few months, TIGA announced some digital distribution training seminar. Great - but they should have done that three years ago. Had they done that three years ago, again, pure speculation, imagine they'd been talking to the UK studios and entrepreneurs and start-ups then. If they'd got started on these platforms three years ago? To me, that would have had much more impact than if they had won tax breaks."

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Wymorence: For me it just boils down to the fact that, even at a giant company, when a game comes out annually it just gives it a vibe of being rushed out the door. And god knows Unity sucked some major lemur with all its bugs...03/31/2015 - 4:22pm

PHX Corp: I launched my spotify account today, and I kinda went a little overboard with adding music03/31/2015 - 3:59pm

Sora-Chan: Con't. Games like AC are a pain to someone like me who likes to play games in order. So when a game gets too many releases too quickly, it puts me off. Only exceptions are games that have no interconnected underlying stories like the FF games.03/31/2015 - 2:53pm

Sora-Chan: Wikipedia has rarely let me down on matters like this. But yeah... AC needs a break.. like two.. or three... or eight years.03/31/2015 - 2:51pm

Conster: There's 9 already?! I think I played 1, 2, and the ones inbetween 2 and 3.03/31/2015 - 2:23pm

Sora-Chan: Con't There are now Nine... of just the main entries into the series. There are 13 more in the "other games" department.03/31/2015 - 2:15pm

Sora-Chan: I tried to get into AC. Was having a decent time with the first one, at which point they had already released three titles. Then a fourth came out... then a fifth... the wall kept growing before I could finish the first.03/31/2015 - 2:14pm

Daniel Lewis: I think ubisoft should give AC a break before it's milked to death,and i'm a big fan of the games03/31/2015 - 1:15pm

Daniel Lewis: The only thing said i disagree with is the final quote on Men's experiences are seen to be universal but women are gendered,though doesn't anita say that games with male protagonists are male power fantasies,so in turn both are gendered03/31/2015 - 1:08pm

Daniel Lewis: i found the video to be much better than any of the TvW series and it's about time the positive women are put in the spotlight03/31/2015 - 1:06pm

Daniel Lewis: So feministfrequency released a positive female character video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXmj2yJNUmQ03/31/2015 - 1:05pm

Daniel Lewis: I think the guy who made the direct leak said it was an april fools joke when a real one was announced03/31/2015 - 12:43pm

MaskedPixelante: No way Nintendo would let information like that get out. Remember, they shut down a memoir about the localization of Earthbound by enforcing a 20 year old NDA on the author.03/31/2015 - 12:42pm

james_fudge: Conster: the larger issue is that Ind. does not protect LGBTQ+ people under state law03/31/2015 - 12:11pm

PHX Corp: @MP I think it is confirmed(not an April Fools joke) http://mynintendonews.com/2015/03/31/nintendo-direct-confirmed-for-wednesday-april-1st/03/31/2015 - 12:00pm

Conster: Apparently Pence intends to amend SB101 so denying service isn't allowed - without explicitly protecting LGBT+ and while still allowing the many other things you can get away with now if it's motivated by your religious beliefs.03/31/2015 - 11:53am

MaskedPixelante: http://mynintendonews.com/2015/03/30/rumour-nintendo-direct-on-april-1st/ A supposed full leak of tomorrow's Nintendo Direct, so you can all laugh and laugh about how wrong it is.03/31/2015 - 11:35am

PHX Corp: http://kotaku.com/why-a-tekken-7-character-is-being-called-a-phoney-1694724959 Why a Tekken 7 Character Is Being Called a Phoney03/31/2015 - 10:08am